Overheard conversations by one’s fellow passengers can be one of the mildly voyeuristic satisfactions of public transit. A snippet of conversation is a brief glimpse into another person’s life and a chance, like Alfred Hitchcock’s protagonist in Rear Window, to invent a backstory for that random fellow passenger based on a momentary exposure to him.

Here is a selection of dialogue fragments overheard during my last 30 days of mass-transit ridership. Some strange, some humorous, and some timely. In no particular order. Which is your favorite?

Do you enjoy ambient music?

I hate building codes. Most of them are obnoxious!

I do not like the feeling of ice touching my lips.

We’re rebels without a car, man.

That’s so “meta” I don’t even know how to respond.

Is it intellectually stimulating or is it just a bunch of liberal fluff?

You have to be in a certain mood to watch a documentary.

No one reads The Economist all the way through. No one!

I usually enjoy statistical probability distributions.

I wasn’t a bully, I was the anti-bully. I’d beat you up if you didn’t stop picking on people.

Ugh, I can’t stand “escalefters.” Stand on the right, please!

Hi! No, really, I mean that. Hi!

Oh look, it’s a rarely-seen-in-the-wild 10-car train.

I don’t want him, I just want his Chipotle.

We are ALL Trayvon.

Quit reading meaning into my words. They have no meaning.

I don’t date white chicks after seeing that movie, what was it? The one where she boiled the bunny.